Episode Details

Marc Chagall grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community in Belarus, survived two world wars and the destruction of everything he knew, and transformed that experience into some of the most joyful and visionary art of the 20th century. His floating lovers, blue violinists, and dreamlike villages became icons of modern painting.

This episode traces how Chagall carried the world of the shtetl through revolution, exile, and the Holocaust and made it luminous.

• His childhood in Vitebsk and how it shaped his visual vocabulary
• The years in Paris among Picasso, Modigliani, and the avant-garde
• His escape from Nazi-occupied France and the grief that followed
• The stained glass windows and murals of his extraordinary late career